McLaren F1 LM

04.06.09 | 1 Comment

The McLaren F1 LM edition is one of the quickest road cars ever produced. 0-to-60 mph? A mere 3.9 seconds. 0-to-100 mph? 6.7 seconds. 0-to-100-to-0 mph, the true test of a car’s acceleration and braking abilities? 11.5 seconds. The top speed falls a bit short of some other million dollar cars, though. It only goes 225 mph.

The McLaren F1 LM was created in 1996 and only five of them were made. The cars were a celebration of the company’s success at the 1995 Le Mans race (hence the LM designator in the name) where five McClaren F1s finished the race, and the car also took home a best in class and best overall award. 1995 was the first time that the F1 had ever been a part of Le Mans and the cars themselves were revamps of street-legal models that had essentially been stripped of 200 pounds of weight and had the engine tweaked to deliver 48 more lb-ft of torque at the expense of 27 horsepower. That’s all they did to take a street car and turn it into a Le Mans champion.

The LM edition car is powered by a BMW Motorsport 6.1-liter V12 engine that produces 680 horsepower and 520 lb-ft of torque (the F1s that were in the Le Mans race produced 600 and 527, respectively. That engine is mounted on an ultra-light carbon fiber chassis and surrounded by a carbon fiber body. The entire package weighs a mere 2,341 pounds. The cars were originally priced at $1.25 million, but that price is irrelevant at this point. There are only five of them in the world, so anybody who owns one of these cars could set their own price. The McLaren F1 LM is, quite literally, priceless.

The McLaren F1 LM used to hold the record for the 0-to-100-to-0 mph time at the 11.5 second mark (before they tried it, the documented record was 12.4 seconds). Since that time, other supercars have been developed that have beat the F1′s time, most notably the Bugatti Veyron, which accomplishes the feat in 9.8 seconds. However, the F1 has secured its place in supercar history as the forebear to the current crop of supercars. The application of the car’s power, along with its aerodynamic signature which generates massive amounts of downforce to keep the tires on the road, is evident in many other supercars and will be remembered for a long time.